The Motilla culture: a hydraulic culture facing the challenge of the 4.2 ka cal BP climate event

Abstract

The motilla is a type of Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlement in La Mancha (Spain). Motillas may have constituted the most ancient groundwater collection systems in Europe. They were built during the 4.2ka cal BP climatic event, in a time of environmental stress after a period of severe and prolonged drought. In these environmental conditions, the construction of these wells was a successful solution that lived on for nearly a millennium and played a major part in the processes of change towards a more complex and hierarchical society. This paper presents the advances made over the last decade on paleoecological, hydrogeological, geophysical, archaeoastronomical, anthropological, archaeogenetic and archaeological aspects of the Motilla culture.